Preserving Koko's Legacy Through Portraiture
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Preserving Koko’s Legacy through Portraiture Article by Elizabeth Sobieski Before the esteemed British portrait painter Richard Stone entered Koko’s quarters at the Gorilla Foundation near San Francisco, the charismatic and linguistically legendary ape had been introduced to Stone through photographs of the artist and catalogs of his exhibitions. One catalog cover depicted Stone’s 1992 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II seated upon a throne and attired in ceremonial robes. When the artist entered Koko’s home, the L-shaped building where the renowned gorilla lived, Koko seated herself upon a large blue drum and cloaked a blanket in her favorite color, red, around her nearly 300-pound muscular form, and signed, “Koko Queen”: Koko is the queen. And she was. Koko, who died in her sleep on June 18, 2018, just days before what would have been her 47th birthday, 2 served as a global leader, an ambassador for her endangered species and the entire nonhuman animal world, and literally a ’spokesperson,’ using a modified form of American Sign Language (ASL), the predominant system of communication employed by most deaf American humans, to express a thousand words, while understanding spoken English. The Gorilla Foundation was incorporated in 1976, just four years after Dr. Francine “Penny” Patterson and Dr. Ronald H. Cohn began to work with the one-year- old Koko, in order to learn the extent of a gorilla’s gestural language skills, unaware that they would be committed to her for the next 46 years; the blonde and photogenic Stanford-trained Developmental Psychologist Dr. Patterson serving as both teacher and family, and biologist Dr. Cohn videographing and photographing their interactions, as well as shooting the extraordinary National Geographic cover of Koko and her pet kitten, whom she named All Ball. The history of that relationship, illustrated with Cohn’s photographs, was eventually transfigured into a best- selling book. The book, Koko’s Kitten, as well as footage of Koko interacting with such personalities as Robin Williams, Betty White, and Mr. Fred Rogers, with whom 3 she discussed the concept of love, brought the world’s attention to Koko as well as to the revolutionary work of the Gorilla Foundation. Currently located in Northern California, the Gorilla Foundation seeks to open a gorilla sanctuary upon a verdant hillside on the Hawaiian island of Maui, the first climatically appropriate gorilla preserve outside of Africa, which would serve as a safe haven for formerly captive gorillas in need of a sanctuary home. There would be hidden cameras in the sanctuary and internet viewing available to great ape aficionados everywhere. Patterson emphasizes that, “Gorillas enjoy their privacy. As a species, they are not suited to being on exhibit.” The Gorilla Foundation presently leases 71 acres on Maui and is hoping to expand the eventual sanctuary to 350 acres. 4 Gorilla Foundation COO, Dr. Gary Stanley, trained as a research scientist, is working on the ‘Koko app’ which will help teach both humans and gorillas to sign and apply other methods of interspecies communication. Stanley has already developed a prototype to be used by zoos, schools and sanctuaries to promote conservation, communication and greatly enhance the care of gorillas confined to zoos. The ape app will also feature videos and e-books, including Koko’s Kitten, Michael’s Dream, and a new children’s book: A Wish for Koko, which will educate people about the great ape mind and the crises gorillas face, as well as providing the language tools that can be used to save them. Dr. Stanley says, “The app will also help the foundation transcribe its thousands of hours of interspecies communication video data, through an entertaining application of crowdsourcing, facilitating the translation of the signs between the human users and the gorillas.” Some of the gorillas that will dwell in the preserve may be exposed to ASL, but Patterson says, “All gorillas use gestures to communicate. Studies have shown that both free-living and captive gorillas use about 100 different signs.” 5 Another goal of future interactive research with gorillas will be to learn more of their language, possibly using ASL as an intermediate language from which to translate. Through the magic of Zoom video conferencing, I was able to speak face to face with the artist Richard Stone, as well as to Drs. Penny Patterson, Ron Cohn, and Gary Stanley. I observe Stone seated in his UK studio, nattily attired in a blue blazer and pinstriped shirt; I notice numerous wooden shelves, charcoal sketches, and a portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Although he can hear me now, he explains that in 1955, at the age of four, he suffered a devastating accident in which he fractured his skull and was 6 rendered profoundly deaf for five or six years before regaining hearing in his left ear. Stone says that as a deaf child of that era, he was taught lip reading but never signing. As a lip reader, his observations of the human face, his visual communications and awareness of nonverbal cues, became more intense than those of most people. He says, “That gave me an interest, a fascination with people’s faces. You can see that the germs of my obsession with portraiture go back to that time.” He adds that if he had learned to sign, “It would have been the most marvelous sort of communication with Koko, but having said that, she understood English perfectly.” He shows me the completed oil portrait of Koko, and I find it astonishing — so much wisdom, depth and majesty in the gorilla’s face. At age 22, Stone had painted an exceptional picture of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who became “the best agent I ever had.” He has since completed 60- 70 portraits of members of the British Royal Family, as well as such subjects as Luciano Pavarotti, Nancy Reagan, and Nelson Mandela, about whom he says, “He was warm, kind and generous to me” and after one of several 7 sittings, the anti-apartheid hero engaged him in a private tour of the predominantly black Johannesburg suburb, Soweto. Stone says, “He changed my life. Like Koko, made me a better person.” That portrait raised $1M, with proceeds going to the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the 46664 AIDS Charity. And while Stone felt transformed by his sittings with the Nobel Peace Prize winner, he admits that his most extraordinary subject was Koko. Richard Stone’s involvement with Koko was generated by his son William, now a recent Oxford graduate, who, as a small boy was fascinated by gorillas. William adored the book, Koko’s Kitten, and when Stone would travel to New York, he would return to Britain with large and lifelike plush toy gorillas from FAO Schwarz. When William did a school project about gorillas, he became 8 conscious of the work of the Gorilla Foundation, asking his mother to bake gorilla-shaped cookies to raise funds at a bake sale, and requesting that his father paint Koko’s portrait and donate it to the Gorilla Foundation. Stone recalls, “I said ‘Sure’ and we composed the letter and the reply was, ‘We should meet your father and we should meet you and it all depends on whether Koko likes the idea.’” Ron Cohn remembers the first meetings between Koko and Richard Stone: “Koko liked older men with white hair. She had a very warm greeting with him.” He adds, “He cut a frame out of a large piece of paper and Koko immediately held it up to frame her face. She was looking through it.” During Stone’s initial interactions, while Penny Patterson translated Koko’s signs and Ron Cohn filmed, the artist was stationed outside Koko’s trailer, and 9 he was very careful, as requested by the foundation, to not look directly into her eyes, make the first move or talk across her, any of which could be perceived by a gorilla as attempting dominance. Koko would ask Stone to lie on the floor, and she would snake her hand through openings in the enclosure, toying with the prone figure. “A bond was established,” says Stone. And despite “knuckles the size of walnuts,” he noted her “smooth leathery skin, that luxurious hair. Oh, my goodness, she was always in peak condition and was clearly very happy and pleased to welcome me.” During Richard Stone’s third visit, Koko signed to Patterson that she wanted him to enter her trailer. As with any portrait, the artist knew he had to allow his subject to grow accustomed to him, to trust him. Hunching low to the ground, he entered. He recalls, “Penny gently whispered, ‘She would like you to move closer.’ It would be so close that our knees would be touching…. She takes my head in both her hands and draws my head closer to hers so I’m looking directly into her eyes and she in mine. This is a heart stopping moment. She had the strength of six men. She could lift my head off my shoulders without thinking about it. It was her initiative, her hosting me, part of this intimacy, my nose pressed up against hers and those extraordinary eyes, and she would blow at me. When she started blowing, I was fully expecting bursts of halitosis, but being an herbivore, she had the sweetest smelling breath imaginable. There was something hugely sensitive about it, almost sort of loving if you want, and she would caress my cheek. I 10 know this must sound bizarre, but this was all part of her getting to know me. I’m reacting, and being sensible, I said, ‘Koko, I’m frightened.’ I thought honesty was best.